[saghm]

If there's no evidence that it will help you or others, then that's a pretty hard position to argue against. The parent commenter asked about this, and the response basically was that it didn't seem likely to be harmful, and now you're responding to that.

[throw310822]

Yes, of course. "Assuming it's entirely useless, why giving your data to anyone" is a hard position to argue against, but unfortunately it's also completely pointless because of the unproven assumption. Besides, there are already enough indications in this thread alone that it is already very useful to many.

[saghm]

That's a pretty disingenuous take on what I said. To quote from the discussion I responded to:

>>>>>> Are you giving your vitals to Sam Altman just like that?

>>>>> Yes, if it will help me and others

>>>> What evidence do you have that providing your health information to this company will help you or anyone (other than those with financial interest in the company)

>>> I’m definitely a privacy fist person, but can you explain how health data could hurt you, besides obvious things like being discriminated against for insurance if you have a drug habit or whatever.

>> [explanation of why it might be worrisome]

> These points seem to be arguments against giving your health data to anybody, not just to an AI company.

I did not make any claims that it was useless; the context I was responding to was someone being dubious the there were risks after being asked whether they had any reason to assume that it would be beneficial to share specific info, and following that a conversation ensued about why it might make sense to err on the side of caution (independently of whether the company happens to be focused on AI).

To be explicit , I'm not taking a stance on whether the experiences cited elsewhere in the thread constitute sufficient evidence. My point isn't that there is no conceivable benefit, but that the baseline should be caution about sharing medical info, and then figuring out if there's enough of a reason to choose otherwise.

[throw310822]

Ok, I might have been to hasty in commenting on your last recap. Your baseline is sound. In any case, we're talking about a medical help/ advice tool. If it's not providing any value, any interaction with it (let alone sharing medical data) is pointless and a waste of time. So I think any convincing argument against sharing private data with it should take in consideration at least a minimum of potentially missed valuable information. Otherwise it's an easy argument to make, but also an empty one.

In this case, I suspect that the classic biases of HN (pro-privacy and anti-ai) might interact to dismiss the value that can be provided by a specialized medical llm/ agent (despite indications that an unspecialised one is already helpful!) while rightly pointing out the risks of sharing sensitive data.